Media Release: Mixed views on job creation impact of new government

BEGINS a spokesperson: “In a recent poll of 100 clients and candidates of leading Scottish recruitment consultancy, Eden Scott, 40 per cent said that they anticipate the majority SNP government at Holyrood will have a positive impact on job creation in Scotland in the next two years, while 35 per cent thought its influence will be neutral and 25 per cent said it will be negative.”

Chris Logue, a founding director of Eden Scott, commented: “The over-riding feeling from these results is that there is still great uncertainty in the jobs marketplace.

“Whether that is purely due to the state of the economy and recent financial trials and tribulations, or to any doubts about the impact the Scottish government itself can have on short-term job creation is less clear.

“There is no doubt that the Scottish government has job protection and creation high on its agenda, and its commitment to massive investment in the renewable energy sector is well documented.

“However, there remain serious concerns that job losses in the public sector will not be compensated for by growth in the private sector.

“At Eden Scott, we are seeing both sides of the equation with a large rise in the number of candidates approaching us due to redundancy but also a steep rise in the number of vacancies our clients are asking us to fill.

“The mismatch, however, is that many of the candidates coming on to the market do not have the skills to fill the available vacancies.

“This mismatch is occurring across the board in IT, financial services, manufacturing, oil and gas and renewables and we are faced with significant skills shortages in some aspects of all of these sectors.

“The key challenge for industry and government is, perhaps, how to quickly re-train individuals or become more open-minded about utilising transferrable skills, particularly in the renewables sector where previous experience is very scarce, due the newness of the sector.

“It will be interesting to review the picture in two years’ time and see what difference a government with a working majority can make to the jobs market in Scotland.”